Friday, October 22, 2010

Is turnover the barometer of “Worth”?

"Less than 10% of signed artists recoup. Take Maximo Park for example. They have by their own admission never made a penny from record sales and make their money from DJ sets in the main. An example I have first hand knowledge of, Embrace, have sold millions of albums, they were a genuinely massive band; they performed from Glastonbury main-stage to Top Of The Pops and everywhere in-between. When they split from Virgin, they owed their label three quarters of a million pounds. I guess my point is that if we promote the Trad Music Biz’s model as “The model” then the message we’d be sending is:

less than one percent of musical artists are part of the music business

only a tenth of those will recoup and make money from their record sales, and that’s good

an artist should be saddled with debt, the rate at which they pay that back is equivalent to a credit card with a 900% interest rate

I can’t promote that, I can’t encourage it, and it’s not representative of the vast swathe of music makers interests to do so."